I'm Chris Winters

Hyperproductive, then not so much...

Over the years I've seen a number of programmers talk about bursts
of productivity. And those are just fantastic -- everything flows and
just fits. But then... it's gone, and that you had such a flow just
highlights the times when you don't. (Doctor: Why do you keep
smacking your head with the hammer? Patient: It feels so good
when I stop!)

So why can't I be like this all the time? Is it just that I have a
limited pool of smarts? Or do I only have sufficient smarts to solve a
problem after churning for a long time then bursting out the result
superfast. (Like how cats sleep all the time...)
Mark and I have joked about this
before: "You lazy bastard, you're just sitting around reading Fark and
bloglines!" "No, I'm tending to long running threads working on a few hairy
problems."

Or maybe I just need to always have challenging problems to work
on? (That would be the most emotionally satisfying answer: it's not
that I'm lazy, I'm just not challenged!) But: if I were really smart,
wouldn't I just figure out how to make the boring stuff
challenging?